Delcys

Venezuela has spent three months measuring the exact moment when a collective expectation begins to turn into disappointment. The monthly surveys conducted by AtlasIntel and Bloomberg for LatAm Pulse Venezuela, fielded in February, March, and April 2026, document a political process with a name, a direction, and a speed. What they show is unequivocal: Delcy Rodríguez is not consolidating a transitional government. She is managing one that is eroding by disguising that transition rather than carrying it out.

This is not a collapse in her popularity, but a clear downward trend is already visible.

The numbers are precise. In February, 37% of Venezuelans approved of Rodríguez’s performance. By April, that figure had fallen to 31.4%. Disapproval rose from 44.3% to 47.1%. In absolute terms, the gap between those who approve and those who disapprove widened from 7 to nearly 16 points in 90 days.

The most revealing data point is not approval but performance evaluation. Those rating her government as “excellent or good” dropped from 23.4% to 16.2%. That share did not migrate into outright rejection. It moved into the “average” category, which grew from 34.7% to 45.3% and is now dominant. That shift suggests disappointment more than anger, and the former is far harder to reverse than open rejection.

The segment that once supported Rodríguez is the one moving the most. A first conclusion is that the management of expectations created on January 3 is not working. Almost 120 days into her time in power, people are not really buying the narrative.

To understand why these segments are shifting, the economic data must be read in parallel. In February, 78% of Venezuelans believed the country would improve over the next six months. That was the optimism of the historical moment, the expectation unleashed on January 3. Three months later, that optimism has dropped 23 points. Today, 55% still expect improvement.

According to these figures, public perceptions of the opposition remain intact.

Meanwhile, reality has not moved: 77% still rate the country’s economic situation as bad. The labor market is perceived as equally deteriorated. The Consumer Confidence Index fell from +14.7 in February to -1.9 in April. The expectations index dropped from +58.3 to +34.6.

The gap between what was expected and what is being experienced is the engine behind everything else. And that gap does not weigh equally on everyone. That vulnerable Venezuelan who, even in crisis, continued to rely on Chavismo out of necessity, obligation, or support (the lower-income, less-educated, a beneficiary of the Patria system who gave Rodríguez the benefit of the doubt) also expected that the post–January 3 shift would be felt in their pocket, their job, their daily life. Three months later, they do not feel it.

Chavismo and the opposition

The leadership approval ranking measured by AtlasIntel completes the picture. María Corina Machado holds a positive image among 56% of participants without losing a point in three months, with a +30 net rating. Edmundo González stands at 49% with +24 points. According to these figures, public perceptions of the opposition remain intact.

The contrast with the Chavista bloc is stark. No government figure has a positive net rating. Diosdado Cabello stands at -52 points, Jorge Rodríguez at -51, and Nicolás Maduro at -46. Rodríguez is the “least negative” within the bloc at -30, but still deeply in negative territory. The Chavista leadership, without exception, occupies extremely high rejection levels, a clear reflection of how the public views anything associated with Maduro.

Ruling is easy when you control the entire State. Legitimizing power requires improving people’s lives. That is the debt the public is now charging to Rodríguez.

Venezuela is moving from the expectations born on January 3 toward reality. And the reality is that Rodríguez’s government is not being perceived as the solution—it is increasingly being identified as the continuation of the problem left behind by Maduro. AtlasIntel identifies corruption as the country’s number one issue for 53% of respondents. The weakening of democracy ranks third at 32.8%. The public does not confuse management with change.

Rodríguez has not lost her critics, a majority that was never with her. What she is losing is politically more costly: her believers. Those who, without being part of the opposition, expected something to change. Those who gave her the benefit of the doubt at the peak of collective expectation Venezuela had not seen in years. That movement, which is quiet and without headlines, is what AtlasIntel’s data captures month after month with a clarity that official discourse cannot conceal.

AtlasIntel sampling

The data for this analysis comes from a random digital recruitment survey (Atlas RDR) conducted among 4,629 Venezuelans between April 24 and 28, 2026. Like all digital polling in Venezuela, the method carries a known structural bias: it overrepresents populations with active internet access, implying a relative underrepresentation of rural areas, older adults, and lower-income sectors without stable connectivity. Absolute figures should be interpreted with caution.

However, the instrument’s real value lies not in a snapshot but in its month-to-month tracking. If the bias is constant (as it is in this case, given that the digital profile captured remains structurally the same each month) then movements between measurements reflect real changes in opinion. A miscalibrated thermometer still detects a fever. And what this three-month series detects is unequivocal: erosion is real, sustained, and advancing among the segments Rodríguez could least afford to lose.

Managing power is relatively simple when the instruments of the State are in hand. Legitimizing it requires improving people’s lives. That is the debt these three months of surveys are charging to Rodríguez’s government.

If this continues, her own base could withdraw its support in the worst possible way: through the disappointment of those making a final bet on trust after years of having lost it. That kind of disappointment does not reverse, and may represent a more dangerous political rupture than outright rejection.

Chavismo wants to remain in control. But time is charging the opportunity for change that people saw on January 3. If that change does not arrive, it will be demanded. Without elections, it will be very difficult for them to claim to represent the country’s leadership before a population that no longer believes in them. Elections are necessary and urgent. Can chavismo avoid them?

American sanctions on the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) have been relieved, generating a flurry of speculations over what is next for the financial sector and the broader economy. After the big news, Delcy Rodríguez announced the resignation of BCV President Laura Guerra on Thursday night. Guerra is the sister of Nicolás Maduro’s first wife, and the aunt of Nicolasito Maduro Guerra.

At least for now, the central bank will be led by Guerra’s former deputy, Luis Pérez-González, a name that is as underwhelming as any of his predecessors. Pérez has been a member of the BCV board since April 2025. Before that, his experience in monetary policy was nil. He was in charge of Carbones del Zulia and of “Monitoring and Control of Eco-mining Development” in Maduro’s Ministry of Mining. You can find him playing Frank Sinatra songs in his spare time.

It doesn’t look like this will be Delcy’s permanent pick.

Before diving into the immediate and medium term effect that recent developments could have, it is worth highlighting what the BCV’s actual purpose is and the spectacular failure that has driven the institution to near irrelevance. 

Ironically, Venezuelan law mandates the BCV to ensure price stability and preserve the value of the currency. We don’t have to go far back to remember the multiple zeros stripped from the bolívar after one of the longest hyperinflationary episodes in modern history, directly contradicting its constitutional mandate. After all, this is a central bank that went years without publishing any data, and when it resumed, it released incomplete figures, forcing economists to reconstruct years of missing information. It is the same BCV that despite its constitutional mandate did not make any counterbalance to the completely irresponsible fiscal policy of the Chávez and Maduro era, shattering any sort of credibility it may have had. 

Nevertheless, reviving the BCV is crucial to the reintegration of the financial sector into the wider Venezuelan economy. In the near term, the effects of sanctions relief will likely be most visible in exchange rate auctions. Greater transparency and reliability in these operations will help reduce the gap between the official and the black market rates. This would directly affect daily life, reducing price distortions and helping stabilize inflation expectations for ordinary Venezuelans. It would also reopen the door to multilateral institutions and international markets, particularly renewed engagement with the International Monetary Fund, which is a necessary step toward debt restructuring and access to credit.

However, there is no on and off switch in terms of trustworthiness, and the BCV is supposed to be in the credibility business.The effectiveness of any central bank relies on its independence from political pressures and ability to communicate a coherent monetary policy, not just on the technical capacity of who runs it. Undermining that independence is what ultimately kills the effectiveness of any policy it may attempt to implement. 

Delcy needs to set up an independent central bank to satisfy the economic discourse, attract investment, and control inflationary pressures. Doing so will require establishing the first institution capable of challenging the administration from within.

This is true everywhere, as hard fought-battles are being waged around the economic world on this matter. From Trump’s challenges to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, which unsettled financial markets, to standout regional cases like Peru, where the central bank has been single-handedly supporting the economy despite near-permanente political turmoil. These examples highlight just how crucial central bank independence is to real economic stability.

Restoring trust in the BCV goes beyond who runs it, but the naming of the new president is one of the most crucial decisions that the interim administration of Delcy Rodríguez will have to make. Whoever is chosen will be scrutinized by both ordinary Venezuelans and international investors to gauge the commitment of Rodríguez to carry out the necessary economic reforms. Someone that falls short of being able to implement true independence and restore confidence in the system will just undermine all the political speech of the economy first that is currently being put on display. 

The paradox is that Delcy needs to set up an independent central bank to satisfy the economic discourse, attract investment, and control inflationary pressures. But doing so will require establishing the first institution capable of challenging the administration from within. This is where the political and economic reality clash.

The decision comes with a level of urgency, as patience is starting to run out in an internal political climate that is heating up. Trade unions and pensioners have recently taken to the streets to demand higher wages and benefits. Appointing someone close to the previous administration will increase frustration and complicate the weak equilibrium that Rodríguez has built around the promise to rebuild the economy.  

The interim government is attempting to make itself useful to the American overlords by convincing them that they have the ability and willingness to commit to economic reform. Failure to follow through with an independent BCV board could strain the relationship further and make it even harder to justify. Now that sanctions have been lifted and oil money is flowing through US-backed accounts, it is time for the interim authority to live up to their side of the bargain, as Delcy risks losing the little goodwill her administration has left.  

Attention is now focused on who will be appointed to lead the BCV, and whether that choice signals a genuine shift toward institutional autonomy or a continuation of past policy constraints.

Commander of the Presidential Guard, head of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), and now Minister of Defense. The meteoric rise of General-in-Chief Gustavo Enrique González López in the 75 days since January 3 is only comparable to Delcy Rodríguez’s own improbable ascent to Venezuela’s presidency.

In less than three months, González López went from leading the Bolivarian Intelligence Service to commanding the Armed Forces and becoming one of the most powerful figures in the Venezuelan government. His appointment points in several directions: counterbalancing Diosdado Cabello’s power (no longer an ally) in the monopoly of force; shielding the acting president from enemies within chavismo itself; and building a loyal enforcement structure for the new ruling clan.

Amid celebrations of Venezuela’s victory in the World Baseball Classic on March 18, Rodríguez seized the moment to overhaul her cabinet. One of the most radical moves was the dismissal of Vladimir Padrino López, the longest-serving minister in the chavista cabinet. After 12 years at the helm of the Defense Ministry, he will hardly be remembered for defending the nation.

Although rumors had long suggested that Padrino López would soon step down, the selection of his successor caught observers off guard.

There were strong reasons to replace Vladimir Padrino López.

Replacing Padrino with González López raises several questions:

What role will he play in a power structure divided among four family-based factions, consisting of Diosdado Cabello, the Rodríguez siblings, the Chávez family, and the Maduro-Flores clan?

If this marks a new political moment, why recycle officials from the Chávez and Maduro governments?

What is the point of US sanctions if the acting president rewards sanctioned officials with key posts?

Does his appointment guarantee impunity for human rights abuses committed under his command?

And, since it came after official visits from the CIA director and the head of US Southern Command, does it have Donald Trump’s backing?

Neither hero nor martyr

Before examining why González López was chosen, it is clear there were several reasons to replace Padrino López.

On January 3, 2026, when US forces bombed key military infrastructure and captured Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan Armed Forces offered no resistance. The attack left 83 dead among those guarding Maduro, including 32 Cubans, while US forces only reported minor injuries. There was no troop mobilization afterward to restore order or deter further attacks.

Padrino appeared only hours later in a solitary video, declaring: “The Bolivarian National Armed Forces inform the world that the Venezuelan people have been the victims of a criminal military aggression by the United States.”

Days later, he justified his inaction bluntly: “It would have been a massacre if we had confronted the Americans.”

When Delcy became the acting minister of petroleum, she appointed González López to a tailor-made role at PDVSA overseeing strategic affairs and production control.

This was not his only failure. In 2021, the FANB lost the so-called Apure war, an operation aimed at expelling FARC dissidents from Venezuelan territory.

The Colombian guerrillas killed 17 Venezuelan soldiers and kidnapped eight more to force negotiations that allowed them to remain in the country. By January 2022, the ELN had finished the job the FANB could not, pushing FARC factions out of the border region.

Nor did the Defense Ministry respond to US attacks on more than 20 Venezuelan vessels in the Caribbean. US tactical teams seized at least eight oil tankers without any naval reaction from Venezuela. Padrino also failed to deploy troops to prevent Maduro’s blatant presidential election fraud on July 28, 2024.

Beyond his rank and decorations, Padrino leaves behind another legacy: signing Resolution 008610, which authorizes the use of “firearms or potentially lethal weapons” for public order control.

Why González López?

González López was the first official appointed after Delcy Rodríguez herself. On January 6, 2026, he was named Commander of the Presidential Guard and head of Military Counterintelligence. These roles are clearly designed to protect the new head of state.

Since then, he has been inseparable from Rodríguez: her shadow, her watchdog, the strongman of the Rodríguez clan. His appointment is key to consolidating this new ruling faction. Previous chavista groups had their own enforcers. These are figures with intelligence expertise, coercive power, and influence over security forces and armed groups. González López fills that role for the Rodríguez siblings.

Their Achilles’ heel had been precisely a lack of support from armed elements within the Venezuelan State. For this reason, the Rodríguez siblings could not operate independently from other chavista factions. They had secured economic power and built extensive business ties, including in the oil sector. Rodríguez’s tenure as foreign minister also gave her a broad international network.

The rise of González López could even foreshadow a purge to both consolidate Delcy’s power and polish the image of a criminalized State.

González López has been close to her since at least 2018, when as vice president she oversaw SEBIN, then led by him.

In 2024, when Rodríguez became the acting minister of petroleum, she appointed him to a tailor-made role at PDVSA overseeing strategic affairs and production control. Such position combined security and operational authority.

González López has therefore become Delcy’s trusted operator, the man that can enforce her orders.

At the same time, chavismo has spent 26 years building a system of power rooted in complicity, which explains the constant recycling of officials. Even if the Rodríguez faction wanted to break away, it cannot fully detach from that structure without risking collapse. It still lacks independent foundations.

Blessed and lucky

After overseeing more than 2,000 arbitrary detentions in 2024 as head of SEBIN, being identified as one of Maduro’s torture chiefs, and linked to the deaths of political prisoners, González López has not been punished. He has been promoted.

His appointment disregards warnings from human rights groups and signals that the regime’s institutional chain remains intact—one of chavismo’s enduring strengths. If prosecutions ever come, they will likely follow the familiar script: a few scapegoats.

His rise could even foreshadow a purge to both consolidate Rodríguez’s power and polish the image of a criminalized State.

As the architect of the Operation for the Liberation and Protection of the People (OLP), González López has already demonstrated a zero-tolerance approach to crime. In practice, that policy led to the killing of young men in poor neighborhoods under the banner of law enforcement.

Could Rodríguez appoint a defense minister of this magnitude without a green light from Washington?

His profile aligns with hardline anti-crime and anti-migrant approaches promoted by US policy in recent years, which could appeal to sectors in Washington.

This may help explain why he appears to have received approval from Donald Trump’s team. Could Rodríguez appoint a defense minister of this magnitude without a green light from Washington? Perhaps not. While not every minister requires it, Defense almost certainly does.

Other signs point in that direction: González López appeared as host during John Ratcliffe’s visit (Trump’s CIA director) and was part of the delegation that met US Southern Command chief General Francis L. Donovan. There have also long been rumors of his role as a US intelligence informant. Which is unsurprising, given that intelligence and repression are his specialties.

For now, sanctions imposed under Barack Obama and accusations of crimes against humanity are not part of Venezuela’s new political moment, as Delcy Rodríguez has labelled it.

After two months, the new era seems to prioritize “stabilization, economic recovery, and political transition.” Not human rights, not justice.

When the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28, the Strait of Hormuz—the narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil passes each day—effectively ceased to function as a shipping corridor. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps responded by warning off tanker traffic, and within days maritime transit had fallen to nearly zero. The consequences were immediate and severe: Brent crude has not dropped below the $100 threshold since March 13 and touched $119 on March 19 following Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Pars gasfield and retaliatory Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure in Qatar and the UAE. For Venezuela, a country sitting atop the world’s largest proven reserves but producing around 900,000 to one million barrels per day (a fraction of its historical capacity of over 3 million in the late 1990s) the disruption arrived at a peculiar moment. It was not a crisis of Venezuela’s making. But how Caracas responds to it may define the country’s energy trajectory for years to come.

On paper, the arithmetic is striking. Alejandro Grisanti, director of Ecoanalítica, estimates that Venezuela receives approximately $400 million in additional revenue for every extra dollar in the average crude price. This figure, at current price levels, represents a fiscal windfall without precedent in the post-Maduro transition. Venezuelan crude exports had already rebounded sharply in February to around 788,000 barrels per day (up from a depressed 383,000 bpd in January, when the post-Maduro-arrest disruption had frozen trade flows), with US refineries absorbing the majority of shipments directly through Chevron or energy intermediaries. Of course, production and exports are different things: Venezuela produces roughly one million bpd but consumes some 230,000 bpd domestically, meaning effective export capacity sits considerably below gross output.

The Hormuz disruption accelerated the export recovery dynamic: with Gulf supply stranded and Asian buyers scrambling for alternatives, Venezuelan crude became a more attractive proposition. Washington has responded in kind. On March 18, the US Treasury issued a broad license authorizing established American entities to conduct transactions with PDVSA directly, a landmark shift after years of near-total sanctions isolation, explicitly framed as a supply-side response to the Iran war. There are structural constraints baked into the relief: payments cannot flow directly to sanctioned Venezuelan entities but must pass through US-controlled accounts, and transactions involving Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, or designated Chinese entities remain prohibited. The US will allow the oil trade, but it will control the cash flow.

The production ceiling, however, remains a formidable obstacle, and not merely a financial one. Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt produces extra-heavy crude with an API gravity typically in the 8–16° range and high sulfur content, which cannot simply be blended into a market substitute for the medium-sour grades displacing from the Persian Gulf. To reach export markets, Orinoco crude must either pass through an upgrader—facilities like Petropiar, which converts it to a synthetic crude of around 26° API—or be diluted with imported naphtha or lighter crude to create exportable blends like Merey. This means Venezuelan barrels serve a specific refinery profile: predominantly the cooking-capable refineries along the US Gulf Coast, which are well-suited to process heavy, sulfurous feedstocks. They are not a drop-in replacement for Middle Eastern crude, but a complementary supply for a defined segment of global refining capacity.

The US military backstop, the reformed hydrocarbon law, and now the broad PDVSA sanctions relief have together reduced the perception of expropriation risk and policy reversal that kept capital at bay for two decades.

ExxonMobil, whose assets were expropriated twice under chavismo, announced it would send an evaluation team to Venezuela within weeks, with Senior Vice President Jack Williams acknowledging the company’s heavy oil expertise from Canadian operations in Kearl and Cold Lake. The caveat was pointed: “Today it’s uninvestable,” CEO Darren Woods had said in January, and Williams’ more cautious optimism reflects the institutional memory of a company burned twice.

Chevron and PDVSA have meanwhile agreed on preliminary terms to expand Petropiar into the adjacent Ayacucho 8 block of the Orinoco Belt, while Shell is in advanced talks to develop the Carito and Pirital fields in eastern Monagas. These are among the few areas that produce the light and medium crude needed as diluent and blendstock for Venezuela’s heavy exports. Delcy Rodríguez has projected fresh oil investments of $1.4 billion for the year under the amended hydrocarbons law. These are meaningful steps. But a preliminary deal and a production ramp are different things. Rystad Energy estimates that simply holding production flat at around 1.1 million bpd requires $53 billion in upstream investment over 15 years, and getting to 2 million bpd by 2032 would demand $8–9 billion per year in sustained capital.

What has shifted—materially and quickly—is market sentiment about Venezuela as an investable destination, and the trajectory is meaningfully positive. Dozens of US hedge funds, asset managers, and energy investors are organizing trips to Caracas in the coming weeks: Signum Global Advisors is running a two-day conference in Venezuela from March 22–24 with 55 participants, roughly half of whom are bondholders who own or have recently purchased Venezuelan government and PDVSA debt (both in default since 2017).

Separate delegations invited by Trans-National Research and other groups are arriving, with agendas featuring meetings with Rodríguez and PDVSA CEO Héctor Obregón. The interest marks a sharp break from the isolation of the Maduro years. Country risk, while still elevated in absolute terms, has been repriced substantially since January: the US military backstop, the reformed hydrocarbon law, and now the broad PDVSA sanctions relief have together reduced the perception of expropriation risk and policy reversal that kept capital at bay for two decades.

Venezuela’s challenge is to use this window of geopolitical necessity to lock in investment commitments, debt restructuring negotiations, and production agreements that survive the normalization of oil markets.

What investors are now stress-testing is no longer whether Venezuela is open for business, but whether the legal and institutional architecture is durable enough to support long-horizon commitments. As analysts at Debatesiesa have noted in examining Venezuelan financial markets, sentiment can shift on headlines, but binding investment decisions require structural reforms and credible enforcement mechanisms. The framework is improving; the question is whether it improves fast enough, and on a stable enough trajectory, to convert this geopolitical moment into a genuine investment cycle.

The deeper question the Hormuz crisis forces is one of timing and durability. Oil prices are now trading above $110 per barrel and analysts at Wood Mackenzie and Rystad are no longer dismissing scenarios above $150 while the conflict shows no sign of imminent resolution, with Pete Hegseth signaling the “largest strike package yet” against Iran on March 19. The EIA, in its latest forecast issued prior to these newest escalations, projected Brent to remain above $95 through the next two months before falling below $80 in the third quarter of 2026 if supply flows gradually normalize. Whether that normalization materializes is the variable on which everything else depends. Venezuela’s challenge is not simply to capture today’s price premium, but to use this window of geopolitical necessity to lock in investment commitments, debt restructuring negotiations, and production agreements that survive the normalization of oil markets.

The country has rarely faced a more favorable confluence of factors: surging global demand for its barrels, a reformed legal framework for private investment, an unprecedented degree of US political and financial backing, and prices that make otherwise marginal projects viable. Whether Caracas—and the Rodríguez administration in particular—has the institutional bandwidth to convert a crisis into structural recovery, rather than another cycle of windfall and waste, is the defining question of Venezuela’s energy sector in 2026.